Just now installed Windows Live Writer 2008 (Final); The installer they have there is just around 2.3MB, but it downloads the actual Live Writer binaries later. When you execute this "small" file, it scans through your computer for other Live programs (WHY??!!) and offers you a screen full of other Live programs that you *should* try…WTH??
Why is this installer trying to be smart? If I need other Live products, I will download them, just like how I downloaded this. Why MS should push down my throat all their other products?? Irritating!
Also, during the "Detecting other Live programs" phase, I was staring at the progress bar, for a solid 15mins??? Man…what the hell was the program doing at that time?? I should probably setup a VMWare machine and try installing this with Process Explorer/FileMon/RegMon/PortMon running in the background. Oh..btw, before someone starts pointing out that it could be because of my machine, wait…mine is a Core 2 duo + 965GF + 2GB RAM + 1TB RAID0. It is fast enough. Adobe Photoshop CS3 tryout starts in 3 seconds flat!
Anyway, now that Live Writer is finally installed and running (I am typing there, right? 
), I want to try out the image scaling/uploading features:
I have setup Live Writer to upload my pictures to my FTP. If this works fine, I guess, one of my major reqs is met.
One cool thing about the way Live Writer handles pictures is, the ease with which you can create a thumbnail and all the possible effects (drop shadow / photo border/…) you can add to the images…Beats WordPress’s post editor anytime!
Looks like things work as expected…Kudos to the WLW team for a decent product. If only their packaging / installer team could do something about the Live Installer, I guess WLW will make a pretty neat tool.
Oh..btw, did I tell you WLW supports WordPress 2.3 seamlessly??! ok..not so seamlessly; Support for the new WordPress tags feature is missing out of the box, but you can easily add it as explained here.
[Update: 2037 IST]
One nice to have feature: When you post something using WLW, it shows the following progress window:
Looks nice, but not informative. If it shows the current action being performed (like, "Uploading the image to ftp:/…." or "Authentication done. Posting now…"), it will be helpful for debugging (if a problem arises). These details can be hidden from the normal user with a collapsed expandable-section in the progress window.
Tags: blog, Reviews, Windows Live Writer, Wordpress
You got OS in RAID 0 ? Scary raid0 implementation by many!
Its as if when someone is hanging from a cliff, they kick their hold, drop them down, jump in ecstasy and say “See, I already told you the cliff is dangerous”.
ya, RAID0 is unsafe. but why not allow as much partial recovery, when the failure is not so catastrophic. It could atleast save some time !
btw,nice picture! Did thamizhmanam/bhashaindia award you with this picture ?
sorry for the offtopic comments
yes boss..I expected somone (esp you!) to comment on my raid0 setup
I started with that, with out thinking much and suddenly one day I sqw that my primary volume was so full of data..backing this up, moving to a more reliable raid….hmm…just thinking abt that makes me yawn!
Rajesh, btw, that photo is a made-up one…I used that to fool my wife once…just used that for testing…avvalavuthaan.